The other day I mentioned that I had loaded up Everquest 2, but was having some major graphics problems with it. The problem was that when loading the game up, visual artefacts appeared all over the screen, even in windowed mode and off the game window region. At the time I wondered if it was a driver issue at fault.
After installing the latest version of the Nvidia drivers the game did indeed load up without incident. I selected my Troll Shadowknight, Bargears and found myself outside my inn room in Neriak, paid the upkeep and entered. It was just as I left it.
I have to say that’s one of the things I do like about EQ2. A lot of folks don’t like instanced housing, but at least when you spend long periods away from the game, everything is there when you come back.
After having a quick walk through both rooms, checking out all the trophies on my trophy wall, I set about the business of deciding what to do next. Quests.
My quest journal was completely chockers, but a lot of those were gray quests that for some reason I hadn’t removed when I outgrew them. Some were half my current level. So I set about deleting most of them. I left the gray heritage quests since they result in trophies. Need more trophies!
Once I had done the housekeeping I headed out. Because it had been so long since I had played I had a little trouble remembering how to get around, and had to go online to find out that it wasn’t the dock bells that I needed to get to where my appropriate level quests are, but the spires.
But, after finding my way to the Sundered Lands, that’s where my client problems resurfaced.
A short time after getting to a new area, I noticed that the graphic quality started to degrade. Again there seemed to be visual artefacts but not so much corruption as a darkening of certain textures and a dirtying of the whole screen. When I changed areas, everything looked clean and fresh, but after a few minutes it returned to the dirty look. And then the client crashed.
So that’s where I left it. I suspect it is a driver issue of some sort. Possibly something to do with the 32 bit drivers. My card is getting on a bit too. It really does look like I need to upgrade.
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